Today in History - January 11

January 11

Today's Stories:

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary of the United States, was born on January 11 in either 1755 or 1757, on the Caribbean island of Nevis in the British West Indies. Hamilton claimed 1757 as his birth year, but probate papers recorded shortly after his mother’s death indicate that 1755 is the correct year. Hamilton was born out of wedlock and his father abandoned the family in 1765. His mother died in 1768, leaving him an orphan at a young age.

Despite his impoverished childhood, Hamilton was hard-working and dreamed of military glory. In 1769, while employed as a clerk at a trading company on St. Croix, Hamilton wrote a letter to his friend Edward Stevens that captures his restless drive and ambition:

…my Ambition is prevalent that I contemn the grov’ling and condition of a Clerk or the like, to which my Fortune &c. condemns me and would willingly risk my life tho’ not my Character to exalt my Station…. I wish there was a War.

Hamilton’s life changed forever when his account of a destructive hurricane was published in St. Croix’s Royal Danish American Gazette in 1772. Impressed by Hamilton’s writing talents, the local business community raised money to send him to America to be educated.

Hamilton left school before graduating and was appointed captain in a New York artillery company in 1776. The following year he was appointed aide-de-camp to George Washington with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and became one of Washington’s most trusted aides throughout the Revolutionary War. Still, Hamilton dreamed of glory on the battlefield and resigned his staff position in 1781. Later that year he was finally rewarded by Washington with a field command at the Battle of Yorktown, where he led a heroic assault on a British redoubt.

In December 1780, Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of Philip Schuyler. Hamilton was then associated with one of New York’s wealthiest and most distinguished families, giving him social status and political connections that would further advance his career. After serving for a year as a delegate in the Continental Congress, he resigned in 1783 and, having trained himself in the law, opened a successful law practice in New York City.

Frustrated by the weak central government under the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton attended the Annapolis Convention in 1786, which led to the Constitutional Convention the following year in Philadelphia. Hamilton went on to serve as a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he delivered a six-hour speech in favor of a strong national government. After the convention, he joined forces with James Madison and John Jay to write a series of essays urging ratification of the Constitution. Known as the Federalist Papers or The Federalist, these eighty-five essays are considered one of the most important sources for understanding and interpreting the original intent of the Constitution.

After the formation of the new government in 1789, President George Washington selected Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury. Confirmed by the Senate on September 11, 1789, Hamilton made his first order of business the creation of a financial plan for the nation. He proposed that the federal government assume state debts incurred during the American Revolution. This proposal led to a contentious debate in Congress, until a compromise was worked out with Congressman James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In exchange for locating the new capital on the Potomac River, Madison agreed not to block Hamilton’s debt plan.

Hamilton’s proposal for a national bank also caused sharp disagreements within President Washington’s Cabinet. Hamilton argued that the implied powers granted by the Constitution allowed for the bank’s creation. In opposition, Jefferson believed that creating a national bank exceeded the powers of the federal government as expressed in the Constitution. Washington eventually sided with Hamilton’s position and the First Bank of the United States was chartered on February 25, 1791.

Hamilton resigned as treasury secretary in 1795 and returned to his law practice in New York City. Although retired from government, Hamilton served as the de facto head of the Federalist Party throughout the John Adams administration. In 1798, Hamilton was appointed inspector general of the army with rank of major general during the Quasi-War with France.

In 1800, Hamilton attempted to thwart the reelection of President John Adams by supporting Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as the Federalist alternative. When the presidential election of 1800 ended in a tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the contest was thrown to the House of Representatives. Hamilton, believing that Burr lacked fixed principles and was too ambitious to be president, worked behind the scenes to end the deadlock in Jefferson’s favor, despite their longstanding political rivalry.

After Hamilton actively opposed Burr’s candidacy in the New York gubernatorial election of 1804, Burr challenged him to a duel. Blaming Hamilton for his defeat, Burr accused Hamilton of publicly insulting him during the campaign. On July 11, 1804, on the heights of Weehawken, New Jersey, Hamilton was mortally wounded by Burr. In his final letter to his wife, Elizabeth, written a week before he died, Hamilton wrote:

I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel…. Adieu best of wives and best of Women.

Learn More

The Alexander Hamilton Papers consist of his personal and public correspondence, drafts of his writings (although not his Federalist essays), and correspondence among members of the Hamilton and Schuyler families. The collection, consisting of approximately 12,000 items dating from 1708 to 1917, documents Hamilton’s impoverished Caribbean boyhood (scantily); events in the lives of his family and that of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton; his experience as a Revolutionary War officer and aide-de-camp to General George Washington; his terms as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress (1782-1783) and the Constitutional Convention (1787); and his careers as a New York state legislator, United States treasury secretary (1789-1795), political writer, and lawyer in private practice. Most of the papers date from 1777 until Hamilton’s death in 1804.

Alexander Hamilton: A Resource Guide compiles links to digital materials related to Hamilton such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images, that are available throughout the Library of Congress website. In addition, it provides links to external websites focusing on Hamilton and a selected bibliography.

Search the George Washington Papers to find hundreds of items to, from, or referring to Alexander Hamilton. Many of these materials document Hamilton’s work as Washington’s aide-de-camp during the American Revolution, as well as Hamilton’s service as secretary of the treasury in the Washington Administration.

Watch a video of biographer Ron Chernow discussing his book Alexander Hamilton at the 2004 National Book Festival.

Alice Paul

Equality of Rights Under the Law Shall Not Be Denied or Abridged By the United States Or Any State On Account of Sex.–Alice Paul, Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, Introduced by the National Woman’s Party, 1923.

Alice Paul, chief strategist for the militant wing of the suffrage movement and author of the Equal Rights Amendment, was born on January 11, 1885 in Moorestown, New Jersey. The product of an upper middle-class Quaker family, Paul attended Swarthmore College and earned a doctorate in social work from the University of PennsylvaniaExternal.

Alice Paul joined the woman suffrage movement while pursuing graduate studies in England. There, she was schooled in the militant tactics of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union. Upon her return to the United States in 1910, Paul found the suffrage movement in need of new ways to capture public and press interest. In November 1912 Paul attended the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and offered her services. NAWSA accepted her offer and made her chairman of their Congressional Committee.

Charged with maintaining NAWSA’s presence in Washington, D.C., her first task was organizing a parade and pageant designed to draw attention to the suffrage movement. Timed to coincide with festivities surrounding the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the event resulted in a near riot as crowds surrounded and at times engulfed parade participants. Nonetheless, the parade on March 3, 1913 highlighted the suffrage cause at a time when the issue was falling from public consciousness.

In 1913, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Crystal Eastman, and others organized the Congressional Union (CU), later known as the National Woman’s Party (NWP). The group’s goal was ratification of a suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. Until the late 1910s, NAWSA mainly worked on the state level, urging each state to pass legislation permitting women to vote.

The party in power has told us that we must get suffrage state by state or not at all. It is hard to realize that we do not have to accept that, that we can take a shorter, better route. It is difficult to believe that we can demand and make ourselves heard…do you want justice for American women? We hope that you do; because swiftly and simply and directly, you can get what you want. –Miss Beulah Amidon, The Suffragist, October 7, 1916.

Sensing the Congressional Union was moving in a more radical direction, NAWSA ousted the CU almost immediately following its formation. Over the next seven years, Paul and her followers relentlessly pursued a Constitutional Amendment. Their policy of holding the party in power responsible for the Amendment’s success contrasted sharply with NAWSA’s commitment to political neutrality. In the 1916 election, for example, the National Woman’s Party campaigned against Wilson’s Democrats in states where women could vote.

Even World War failed to divert the National Woman’s Party from the suffrage campaign. Instead of calling a truce with President Wilson, suffragists picketed his White House with signs demanding “Kaiser Wilson” extend democracy to women. These peaceful, if abrasive, demonstrations ended with arrest and imprisonment. Behind bars, Paul and other suffragists continued their protest with a prison hunger strike and eventually were force fed.

During a time when print media was one of the primary means of influencing public opinion, a number of women’s organizations created their own publications. One of the more well known of these titles includes The Suffragist, the official journal of The National Woman’s Party. Not only did these periodicals improve organizing and spread awareness, they also illuminated the differences in strategy between various groups campaigning for suffrage. It is important to note that not all the press attention was positive. There were a number of anti-suffrage publications, as well as a number of critiques of the suffrage movement and it’s leaders in the mainstream press. For example, in an article in The NationExternal (1921), Freda Kirchwey writes about the failure of the suffrage movement, and specifically Alice Paul, to consider the perspectives and concerns of black women.

Following adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Alice Paul continued to fight for women’s equality. After earning a law degree in 1922, she wrote the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), also known as the Lucretia Mott amendment. The National Woman’s Party proposed the amendment in 1923 as a means of ending discrimination on the basis of gender. The ERA passed both houses of Congress fifty years later when a new generation of feminists took up the cause. However, three-fourths of the states failed to ratify the amendment by the 1982 deadline. Active in the movement until her death in 1977, Alice Paul lived to see enormous change in the rights and status of American women.

Some women’s rights organizations opposed the ERA on grounds it would undermine labor legislation that improved working conditions for women and children. Ethel M. Smith outlines this argument in Toward Equal Rights for Men and Women, published in 1929 by the Committee on the Legal Status of Women, National League of Women Voters.

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party: This collection includes photographs that document the National Woman’s Party push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later campaign for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Included are a timeline of key events in the history of the NWP as well as essays on major figures of the Party and tactics and techniques used during their suffrage campaign.

Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911: These scrapbooks document the activities of the Geneva (NY) Political Equality Club, founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Smith Miller and her daughter Anne Fitzhugh Miller, as well as efforts at the state, national and international levels to win the vote for women. Alice Paul describes the treatment she endured while imprisoned in London for participating in a suffragette demonstration in the article “Alice Paul Talks”.

Today in History features on woman’s suffrage include: the 1854 Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention; the 1869 decision by the Wyoming Territory to grant women the right to vote; the 1884 address by Susan B. Anthony to the House Judiciary Committee; and, the 1917 arrest of suffragists in front of the White House.